From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: d80211: ANNOUNCE: DadWifi, a port of MadWifi to d80211 Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:55:32 -0700 Message-ID: <20061017215532.3d3c769a@dads-laptop> References: <20061018001403.GA22990@devicescape.com> <20061017185116.1f14bd86@dads-laptop> <1161145560.2285.32.camel@portland> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Return-path: To: Pavel Roskin In-Reply-To: <1161145560.2285.32.camel@portland> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: madwifi-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net Errors-To: madwifi-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:26:00 -0400 Pavel Roskin wrote: > Hello! > > On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 18:51 -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > > I would consider this a BAD thing. You are creating a derived work > > out of GPL and non-GPL software. This actually will hurt the possible acceptance > > of the d80211 stack into the mainline kernel. > > On the contrary, I think this effort with spur interest in d80211, > Atheros hardware and stimulate development of OpenHAL. It will also put > additional pressure on Atheros to open HAL sources. HAL's are bad as well. You want a real driver, not one that has multiple layers of indirection. > The technical ability of d80211 to handle a popular chipset would hardly > undermine its chances to be included into the kernel. It takes more > that one step to achieve free in-kernel support for Atheros chipsets. > DadWifi may be one of those steps, OpenHAL or open-sourcing the Atheros > HAL would be the other. If Atheros does open source their existing driver. Someone will need to do a new driver that gets rid of the HAL layer. > If DadWifi succeeds at supplanting MadWifi, it will reduce the > proliferation of incompatible 802.11 stacks for Linux. The FreeBSD > stack included in MadWifi will become obsolete. > > There are many great ideas involving meshing networks that require > support at the 802.11 MAC layer because they are tied to the WDS > implementation. Those efforts can be shared if the MAC layer is shared. > A company doing mesh networking on Atheros today could switch to > Broadcom tomorrow if Broadcom makes better chips, or vice versa. > Users of DadWifi would contribute fixes that would affect users of other > chipsets. > > Should d80211 be merged with the existing 802.11 stack in the kernel, > users of DadWifi would be among the testers, and they will ensure that > useful features of d80211 are not lost. As a test or transition vehicle it is a DadWifi is good, but hopefully it won't slow the progress to a real open source solution > Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't see absolutely anything > that could harm the chances of d80211 to make it to the mainline > kernel. Christoph et. all will insist that everything be EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642